Constructing phylogenetic relationship based on the independent selection law of genome sequences

ABSTRACT Exploring the composition and evolution regularity of genome sequences and constructing phylogenetic relationship by alignment-free method in genome level are high-profile topics. Our previous researches discovered the CG and TA independent selection law s existed in genome sequences by analysis on the spectral features of 8-mer subsets of 920 eukaryote and prokaryote genomes. We found that the evolution state of genomes is determined by the intensity of the two independent selections and the degree of the mutual inhibition between them. In this study, the two independent selection patterns of 22 primate and 28 insect genome sequences were analyzed further. The two complete 8-mer motif sets containing CG or TA dinucleotide and their feature of relative frequency are proposed. We found that the two 8-mer sets and their feature are related directly to sequence evolution of genomes. According to the relative frequency of two 8-mer sets, phylogenetic trees were constructed respectively for the given primate and insect genomes. Through analysis and comparison, we found that our phylogenetic trees are more consistent with the known conclusions. The two kinds of phylogenetic relationships constructed by CG 8-mer set and TA 8-mer set are similar in insect genomes, but the phylogenetic relationship constructed by CG 8-mer set reflect the evolution state of genomes in current age and phylogenetic relationship constructed by TA 8-mer set reflect the evolution state of genomes in a slight earlier period. We thought it is the result that the TA independent selection is repressed by the CG independent selection in the process of genome evolution. Our study provides a theoretical approach to construct more objective evolution relationships in genome level.